Marketing in Small Hotels I Read Summarize

Marketing in Small Hotels

i read summarize paper, talking strong paper give opinion. As references summarize

Moriarty, Jane, Jones, Rosalind, Rowley, Jennifer, & Kupiec-Teahan, Beata. (2007). Marketing

in small hotels: A qualitative study.

Journal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, 26 (3): 293-315.

According to Moriarty (et al. 2007), the marketing practices of small enterprises form a unique subset of entrepreneurial techniques that are distinct from the positioning of larger entities. Given the decline in tourism in the United Kingdom, the focus of the authors is specifically upon the hotel industry as a way of shedding light upon ways to improve the prospects of the hospitality segment. The authors interviewed 15 small hotel owner-managers using loosely-structured telephone interviews and transcripts were organized according to common themes and then analyzed (Moriarty 2007:300).

A literature review of research on small hotels found that "SMEs tend to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term objectives due to time constraints (Beaver and Harris, 1995) and prefer action rather than planning (Moriarty 2007:295). Their strategic marketing tends to be less formalized than large enterprises as well. "SME's have the advantage of having closer contact with customers and are more flexible, responsive to change and more innovative than most larger firms. They rely significantly on word-of-mouth for promotion" (Moriarty 2007:295). They lack the resources for formalized, large-scale marketing research and brand loyalty membership programs.

The researchers attempted to classify the interview responses based upon Carson's model of activity. However, because so many responses lay between Carson's scale of "little or no marketing" and "implicit or simple marketing," the researchers created an additional category of "inexpert marketing" to more effectively assess the responses (Moriarty 2007:300). "The additional category of "inexpert marketing" is a level of marketing between non-marketing and implicit marketing. The firm whose level of marketing planning is 'inexpert' has some understanding of the relevance of marketing and attempts to carry out marketing effectively, but does not have the required knowledge or experience to do so successfully" (Moriarty 2007:300). Inexpert marketers have a vague knowledge of size, location and possibly competitors, but little understanding of how to engage in segmentation, versus implicit marketers which do engage in some segmentation, and the sophisticated marketing of larger firms. In contrast, "the inexpert marketing hotel does not keep customer records because they feel that they know their regular customer base well, and converse on a first name basis with them. The hotel however does not know how many customers have used their hotel and previous customers are never contacted" (Moriarty 2007:308).